Blogging

Huge Change

There I said it, cloud computing has brought about massive change in the way we do business. It’s provided competitive advantage for smaller companies and huge economies of scale across the entire range of business sizes. The ability for a three person company to have access to the same functionality as a company with 3,000 staff is indeed a revelation.

This has allowed smaller companies to plug into advanced software infrastructures (for example Sales Force) and to have powerful tracking and reporting that would only have been a pipe dream just a few years ago.

And, whilst that is brilliant for small and medium enterprise, there has been an unexpetced side effect of development environments such as SaaS and PaaS.

Development Environment

These tools provide a powerful development environment and the ability to build cloud apps quickly and efficiently. And, as you can imagine there is no shortage of ideas for new applications. After all oif this same competitve advantage can be delivered in to new applications areas there is money to be made.

And, therein lies “the rub”, this has lead to the rise and in some cases, very quick fall of a number of cloud based application companies.

Different Skills

This has made recruiting in this sub set of the niche extremely difficult and a highly skilled process that demands a skillset somewhat out of the norm for the recruitment industry. The difrference is that, when most people move into a permanent job, they are looking to stay for a number of years. If a company trying to build a new app runs out of investement funds, they are very likely to collapse, and this happens with monotonous regularity in this market.

That means suddenly a lot of highly skilled SaaS developers could suddenly be in the market for work.

Now, I know you could use contract staff and they would be more used to a sudden “out of work” situation, but, bosses want longevity and to know their development team are secdure.

This ebb and flow is much more pronounced in this market so, as I said, special skills are needed.

Unique Market

“We specialise in this pre IPO and Venture funded sector of the cloud app market, so we know what goes on…how it works”, he explains, “we know companies come and go, sometimes very quickly, and we have to be prepared toi move both our clients and candidates on very quickly. We have to understand all of the development projects, their status as well as knowing where the pockets of demand for skills are”.

“It is such a fluid situation and one that requires rapid reaction times, we find we simply have to be far more pro-active than a normal recruiter would be in order to maximise our revenue from the market. Professional Services Recuitment in Cloud Services is a tough ask, and it requires very specific skills. We have to be extremely diligent in our own recruitment. We need to have our finger on the pulse and be able to react. Understanding the market and the n being able to call people in disrtressed situations and make something happen out of nothing is a key skill for our recruiters”.

Reaction Time

“In a normal recruitment situation it is nowhere near as mission critical to move quickly in most instances. I have found that highly skilled people do not like being idle. But it also takes a “certain type” of ceveloper to enjoy the cut and thrust and indeed uncertainty that is inherent in this sort of cloud applications environment. Some people need stability to thrive. However, we have earned our reputation by being able to react quickly to urgent situations and indeed in many instances to pre-empt them. You see, being pro-0active is where we win in most cases. Other recruitment agencies just do not have the market knowledge, database and tools to do what we do, it is very specialised”.

As you know this site is all about people who manage to find that lifestyle business. It might not be what you would think as the traditional lifestyle business, sitting on the beach with a laptop for example. In my humble opinion, this extends to people who work long hours because they do something they love.

Such is the case with Martin Schlatter at Tintmaster in London Colney in the boonies outside London. Tintmaster is a window tinting business and I have to admit it’s not something I’d ever thought about before I met him.

So, I had to ask the question…well it’s rude not to isn’t it?

I Just Love Window Tinting

Martin, what is it about window tinting that you love so much?

He lets out a loud and hearty laugh, “I know, people do find it strange”, he laughs again, “and do you know what? I don’t really know, I just get a buzz from tinting windows”.

In what way?

“Do you know what, I find kit therapeutic”, he smiles widely this time, “there is something very calming about putting the film on the glass, smoothing it out, making sure every little air bubble is gone and then heat sealing it on to the glass. And, it just looks so darned cool once it’s been done”.

O.K, I can sort of get that, but it must be more than that?

Customer Reactions

“Yes, I guess so. I mean, it does look so good and I really enjoy seeing customers reactions when they see the end result be that on their car, home, conservatory or office windows”, he says, “I see genuine surprise in many people that their glass just looks so good”.

Why do people have window tinting done?

“Goodness me”, he laughs again and takes a sip of his Costa coffee, “their reasons can be many and varied and genereally they are personal to the customer. Some want added privacy in their cars, offices need to reflect sunlight in summer and keep them warm more cheaply in winter, so we do reflective glass film. Some people do it purely for the aesthetics that tinting windows can bring”.

“So, as you can see people have their glass tinted for many various reasons”.

Long Established Business

How long has Tintmaster been going?

“Over twenty years”, he replies, “And, I wouldn’t do anything else. To be honest, we get a lot of our business by recommendation. We also have a very good SEO agency that achieve great rankings in Google, and…we have two high flying football clubs with their training grounds in the vicinty, so those Boys like getting their new car windows tinted”, he laughs that booming laugh again.

“You’d be surprised, despite the fact they earn a fortune, they still like a bargain”!

Really?

“Indeed, they do”.

Home, Car, Commercial

What’s your busiest area?

Car window tinting for sure”, he says, “we’ve started doing more commercial window tints and home window tinting has always been popular, but we do more cars than anything else. We find people like coming in to the workshop and watching the coloured film being applied. They get sort of fascinated by it. I end up doing a commentary for a lot of customers. People seem to be genuinely interested in what’s going on”.

Thanks Martin, it has been a pleasure and very enlightening. If you want to see Martin’s web site you can find it at www.tintmaster.co.uk.

Chill Out and Just Let a Skilled Wedding Coordinator Supervise Your Special Day!

These were the words Tania Nursiah heard as she started planning her own wedding. Little did she know that some seven years later she would herself become a wedding planner. Working in the City for a major financial institution she was busy beyond words.

But the birth of her daughter stopped all that.

Change Required

“I thought I’d just go bacl to work and everything would be fine”, she smiles – but it wasn’t.

Tania knew she had to change course and use her in depth admin and organisational skills in a new direction that gave her time with her new family.

“I was very fortunate indeed”, she says, “I spoke to the planner who did my wedding and we got talking. I asked if I could help her out with some work and she agreed. I guess I was in somewhat of a privileged position in that I was paid well in the City and I could afford to take time away without pay. So, I offered to work free of charge. Needless to say Sue bit my hand off”. She smiles at the thought.

Amazing Experience

“However, it was fantastic experience and I learned so much. I’d always told Sue my aim was to start my own wedding planning business and she was fine with that. She appreciated the help and she showed me the ropes for six months. It gave me such a fabulous basis on which to start and then build Orange Blossom”.

As any engaged-to-be-married groom or bride who has a wedding day approaching knows, organising a wedding day requires a lot of valuable time, energy and cash.

Incredible Complexity

Every single feature has to be looked into and organized, for example, flowers for the wedding service and relations, wedding breakflast food selection selections, seating, wedding dress, accessories and bridesmaid and usher clothes and, naturally, wedding venue and overnight accommodation.

The catalog of details – the timing and orchestration of which should be perfect – is surprisingly infinite – and so is the added cost!

A Growing Trend

There’s no doubt that today the use of wedding organizers is increasing fast.

Employing a wedding co-ordinator is on most of young couples’ agenda. Then again, you may not know it but a professional wedding organisation service may be more straightforward to recruit than you think. There is little question, each bride would want the chance to get the assistance of a wedding planner, and nowadays it might just be simpler than you think to hire one.

Advantages

Look at the advantages of hiring an experienced, professional expert to co-ordinate your special day by checking out this address to learn more and see ways you can make your wedding even more of a dream day.

And, let’s face it, the last thing you want to be worried about on your big day is organising other people. You want to be able to relax and enjoy…as you should! It’s the biggest day of your life.

This site is all about creating a balanced life to include work, family and social. Today I talk to Chris Mason from uber successful Digital Marketing recruitment agency Intelligent People. It’s an interesting story that I hope you will find useful.

So, how long have Intelligent People been recruiting online marketing staff?

“We started in 2002”, says Chris, “I genuinely think we were the first recruitment company to focus solely on digital marketing, which if you think back 14/15 years was very definitely nowhere near as advanced as it is today”.

Yes, very much so, I don’t think Amazon was much more than an online book shop at the time and traditional retailers were laughing at Bezos…who’s laughing now.

A Generalist Market

“Yes, indeed”, laughs Chris, “the market wasn’t really formed and most of the vacancies were generalist, whereas today we see vacancies that are very specialised. The job functions have been chunked down into true specialisms like for example multi channel strategy jobs or email marketing vacancies“.

We do digress here though, so I must bring Chris back on subject!

Motivations

So, Chris, tell me about your start up because this is the crux of the issue I want to get to. The motivations and reasons you and Doug (Bates, his co-owner and director) started Intelligent People in the first place.

“It’s an interesting story for sure”, he says, ” we were both working for a recruitment agency in London serving the banking community of the City of London. If you’ve ever worked in that market it’s cut throat”!

I can imagine, but never worked there.

“We were doing really well but working crazy hours. The City was awash with money and they needed IT technicians to make the trading systems ever more complex and faster. We were placing programmers with huge Mathematics skills – rocket scientists. They used the same maths to build trading systems”.

Commuting Hell

“But, we hated the market and hated the long hours and commute into the City. It was dirty, hot and ripped three hours out of our days. We were earning big money, but got home late at night, knackered only to crash out, get up aty six the next morning and do it all again”.

So, it wasn’t really any sort of life?

“Absolutely, no quality of life”, he says, “don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind working hard especially when the rewards are there, but there is definitely a quality of life issue when you spend three hours a day commuting. So, over a beer one Friday after work, Doug and I hatched our plans!”

“It sort of started as a joke, a kind of “what if”, and it was what if we could plan our ideal life. We both loved recruitment, we were big headed enough to think we could do it on our own, and we wanted to stop wasting those precious three hours per day”.

The Criteria

So, that was the basis of Intelligent People, the criteria it had to fulfil.

“I guess so”, he replies, “it really was just a sort of joking about session to start with, but then we both went quiet, and realised, why not? It was a “light bulb” moment. So, we decided to both think about it over the weekend and reconvene over lunch on the Monday”.

“When we had lunch on that Monday where we realised instantly we both had the same vision, so over the next few months we set about making it happen. The basis was simply more of an accent on lifestyle for us and any subsequent hires, an office in our home town (St Albans) and outrageous customer service”.

A great basis for a business, how long did it take you to get going?

The First Big Challenge

“Not long, we knew our client base well, so we gave our notices in one month after conception and started almost the day after our notice expired. With just the two of us, we immediately hit a wall. Our client base turned out not to be as loyal as we thought. People wanted to talk to us, but in the Banks it was very corprate and run by HR departments. We weren’t preferred suppliers so we had to work on scraps to start with”.

Not good?

“Well, it focussed the mind for sure”, he smiles at the recollection, “the market was changing to an outsource model so we immediately started looking at alternative markets. Call it lucky, maybe, but with digital marketing appended to IT at the time, we managed to pick up some vacancies that none of the IT agencies seemed to be able to fill”.

Looking For New Opportunities

“This made us research what digital marketing was all about and we realised that it was a potential goldmine. Technology waqs going to drive it, but even we didn’t realise to what extent the market would grow. So, we were the earliest adopters of internet marketing as a niche for recruitment”.

“This if course gave us a great USP when pitching for more online marketing business and soon we were gettinga reputation as a good place to go”.

Was it luck? Or something more?

“A bit of both I think in all honesty”, he says, “it was sort of by default, but we had to understand and recognise the opportunity and go through the door. Doug did an amazing job in starting to make sense of the market and to see the potential. So, we gradually transitioned and by the end of 2003, we were solely Digital and had hired our first consultant. It was an exciting time”.

Going Strong

And, here you are all these years later with a vibrant lifestyle recruitment business?

“Yes, it’s gone well. We still have offices in St Albans where both Doug and I live. Yes, we work hard, but it’s a ten minute commute home and we make sure we finish by 5.30 to 6pm most nights. We ask the consultants to do the same because we want them to have the same quality of life as well. It’s an important strand of what we are about as a company”.

I really like what Intelligent People are doing in terms of offering a career, high earning potential coupled with the right attitude to lifestyle. You can find their website at www.intelligentpeople.co.uk Look them up!